searchmoves never stops

[quialzar]

Hello and thank you for the awesome project, I've been having issues with searchmoves, it goes infinite even when I set a depth movetime or nodes.

engine.send(command: .stop)
engine.send(command: .position(.fen(fen)))
engine.send(command: .go(searchmoves:["a2a3"],depth: 14))

here's my code it doesn't stop at 14 and seems to go forever.
for now I just added command stop if condition is met in engine.receiveResponse = { response in

if let depth = info.depth, depth >= 14 {
engine.send(command: .stop)
}

[Amir-Zucker]

I just want to prefix my response with
"
Regardless of the result, this is probably is not a problem with this framework, rather an issue with the engine itself or with your configuration which I will get to right after this disclaimer.

This framework basically acts as an intermediator for arbitrary chess engines as long as they conform to the UCI protocol.
https://backscattering.de/chess/uci/2006-04.txt
"

---

Let's assume you are starting a new game, (fen: rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1),

"depth" parameter is how many possible moves deep the engine should consider - (I'm really simplifying here, but let's keep it concise so you can think of it this way)

1. white: e4 black: e5, 2. white: d4 black: Nf6... The is DEPTH .

"nodes" parameter is how many moves wide the engine should consider
This means you have the possible NODES:
a3, a4, b3 ,b4 c3, c4, d3, d4, e3, e4, f3, f4, g3, g4, h3, h4, na3, nc3, nf3, nh3.
Or 20 possible moves for the first white move.

Now, for each of these moves, there are all possible black moves (20 moves) and then all possible white responses. If each of these moves has 14 possible moves ahead, you can see how this could get out of hands really really fast.

So basically if you just set depth, the engine would try to evaluate all possible moves until that depth for both sides. Which would probably take forever or at least a very very long time.

Try to include both nodes and depth parameters.
Alternatively you can set the movetime parameter to limit the engine to a specific "thinking" duration, or manually call stop to terminate the search and retrieve the best result thus far.

---

If the above didn't solve the problem:
Which engine are you using?
In addition, can you share a code sample that reproduces the issue?